Fire, Make Me Pure Again
by Gabriel-1992
Summary: No longer a One-Shot by special request: At Founder s Day, Damon almost dies in the basement fire. But what could be the end, might just as well turn out to be a road to ... redemption?
1. Burning Alive

He knew he was not going make it this time. While the first impact of Jonathan Gilbert`s weapon device sent him sprawling to the floor, the second had set his body into convulsions so massive that his spine snapped, rendering him immobile and helpless, watching Uncle John staking Anna. A malicious smile on his face, he had turned to him, but instead of thrusting a wooden stake into Damons guts also, he simply dropped a match on the fuel-soaked carpet, lighting it up in a blaze.

Oh, he was able to heal even an injury as serious as this. Just not fast enough to make it out before the fire had crawled to him across the floor. Resulting in him burning alive and fully conscious, without any hope to rise again, fire being one of the very few things able to destroy a vampire. Not that he was afraid, after all, when you get staked, tortured, shot and strangled so many times as he had his 145 years of vampire life, pain does wear off some of its mind-grinding terror. He had even felt the small "pling" occasionally, when his body had been destroyed so badly that he technically died again, his mind dissolving into sheer nothingness. Just to wake up again seconds later, so much different from the first time, when his soul cried out in shock and terror that starless winter night of 1864. Feeling his life bleeding away, he had been struggling to hold onto, dreading hell´s sea of fire Guiseppe had threatened him with so often when he grew up an ever-questioning, ever-searching kid. For surely no God could ever forgive drinking blood, even if it was his first true love who seduced him to do so. When he finally surrendered, there had been this tiny, tiny spark of hope that the sea of fire´s purifying blaze would be able to redeem him... sometime.

He woke up a vampire in transition instead, finally the demon his name had always suggested. Only after his brother made him feed, he realized that he also was the incredibly strong, unbelievable beautiful predator of the night Kathrine had promised him to be. Humans now were mere cattle to him now, born to feed his hunger and his lust, not even Bree or Isobel touching anything inside of him, though both tried hard in their own ways. For of course, a vampire has no soul, being able to shrug off any feelings most conveniently. Until he met Elena. He loved her the very moment he saw her, though it took a spiteful Isobel´s remark for him to finally realize it.

Hating and hoping in the same instant, he prayed for Elena to survive Founder´s Day along with Stefan, because finally losing her boyfriend after all of last year´s deaths would most certainly break her. Not that he was in any condition to do anything about it now, but he did not mind to die – much. But losing her hurt more than any fire ever could, after all, she was his only friend in 145 years and may, just maybe, his only real love ever.

So, when the flames started to lick on his body, he surrendered to the pain almost happily, for it numbed out the other one. His mind already blurred, when he met Elena´s panicked stare right through the raging fire, having gone blank when a wet blanket smothered the flames and strong arms dragged his body out into the night, just as the tiniest crescent made its way out from behind the clouds.


	2. Yes, I ve Been Broken, Too

As he watched his brother´s body engulfed in flames, dread consumed him. He held back a screaming Elena from running into the blaze, getting herself killed, in an iron grip until one of these damn fragile human bones snapped. She was never going to forgive him, naming his jealousy the reason for his hesitation and being so shamefully right about it.

It was Alaric who dragged out of the fire what was left of Damon, wrapping the charred body into a wet blanket, uttering senseless words of comfort to something that was no longer a vampire and had ceased to be human one and a half centuries ago. And it was Alaric who put it onto a bed, in a dark spare room of his small house. Alaric, of all people, charred and broken himself – much of it Damon´s fault – yet so much more forgiving than Stefan ever managed to be in all of his undead imitation of life, and hating himself to hell about it.

When the pain finally subsided, he was so far beyond broken he did not even realize it first. When his body hat gone into recovery mode to mend the near-killing damage the fire had done it had shut down everything not absolutely necessary to heal. Resulting in 145 years of anger, hurt, shame and guilt crushing down on him in one eternal instant, because his body did not care one bit about any vampire mind defense system. Those feelings claimed him completely, crushed everything in his mind so absolutely that physical torture and death felt like mercy to him. He would have begged for it, on his knees, if there had been any "him" left. As the last waves of guilt washed away – Brees surprised face when he ripped her heart out, Stefan´s shocked expression when he stalked Lexy – they took away Damon, Prince of Darkness, with them.

With Alaric and Elena on their way to the Emergency Room for her broken wrist and his burns and bruises, Stefan stared into the darkness for a long time. He could hear his brother´s body moving, steering, painfully struggling to heal, and yet could not help but only feel sorry for himself. For most of his vampire life be had tried so hard to be a decent person, even at horrible costs on his body and mind.

Damon was never interested in anyone but himself, and he had done everything he could to make Stefan´s days an eternal misery. But still, he had a way to make people love him, starting with Kathrine. Alaric, Liz, Jeremy, even Bonnie – they all cared for Damon, even though his brother probably never allowed himself to feel any of it. Stefan doubted, that his brother had felt anything beyond anger and hate for a long time. Not even for Elena. The girl was just some bait in the cruel game they had been playing now for centuries, a mocking reversal of the brotherly love they once shared. A game that would never end as long as both of them lived, but would leave a person as innocent and warm as Elena twisted and broken, and finally, dead or worse. Burning rage flared up in his mind, as he stepped closer to the bed, ready to strike and end it all while his brother was still helpless.

Then, all of a sudden, Damon bolted up, staring into the dark room without registering him or anything at all, with tears streaming down his cheeks from eyes, clear and light blue like a newborn baby's.


	3. Ashes To Ashes

He could remember the very moment he had rooted for him. When he lay at the vampire´s feet, choking on his own blood, searching for his killer´s triumphant smile and finding, what nobody was ever allowed to see and live: With that pain in his eyes, the elder Salvatore brother could cut glass. A void of pain and hunger for love, so much a mirror of his own need, he could not help feeling sorry for both of them, even dieing.

She saw him throwing up blood into the neglected remains of the flowerbeds just outside Alaric´s porch again, his eye sockets hollow from malnutrition, his once strong body small and frail like a child´s. Desperation and self-hate radiated from him in black waves. When he refused to let her – or anyone, for that matter, touch him, she wondered how long he could go on like this before his body snapped along with what little was left of his mind. The sheer thought of it was torture.

His death had given him some new perspectives to life, but still he could not understand how they had become something close to friends so quickly. He had come to care for the vampire with the quick, cutting wits, this most fearless and ruthless fighter he had ever seen. Fiercely loyal and cruelly honest, Damon had been the only one Alaric had ever come to trust to watch his back. But this man was gone now, a double-dead walking corpse, and he kept repeating one question in his mind: If he asked him to to have mercy on him and make it end, would he be man enough to do it?

Some twisted fate, black magic, or whatever it was that ran this Hell of a universe had granted him forgiveness. Feeling every pain he had inflicted on each his 1440 victims, dieing every single death that he had on his hands, recognizing all the souls he had crushed, the fire had finally burned everything away. Price paid in full. Clean slate. So, why couldn´t he himself forgive him?

Because it should have been Stefan all along. His brother, who had tried to be a good person for so long, torturing himself over flaws only he could see. It was Stefan`s girlfriend that had believed in something redeemable about him, and the memory of her smile had been his only cover when he was out there, answering for his crimes, and being forgiven, undeservingly. He did not deserve anything, except death.

"Kill me". There they were, the words he had been dreading. And it took only one look into the vampire´s strange new eyes to know that there was no arguing. If not even forgiveness was able to mend those shattered pieces of a soul, then here was no hope. Not for Damon, but not for him either. When he lifted the stake, he tried to blink back tears so it would be a clean, fast strike. Then everything went black.

When he regained consciousness, a hurting heap at the opposite wall, both brothers were gone, but all of a sudden, bliss filled his heart.

THE END


	4. Coda

One had to give Alaric credit: It would have been a perfect death blow, the mercy killing Damon had begged him for. The teacher, trying hard to hold it together, had been precise and fast with his stake – but nowhere fast enough for an upset vampire. Stefan hauled him away single-handedly, throwing him through the length of the room, until he painfully hit the doorframe. Then he dragged his brother away from where he stood, arms outstretched like the crucified man that he was against the white wall, waiting for the end with something like a crooked smile on his face.

He had expected his brother to fight, but he did not, so he just pulled his unresponding body, once covered in muscles from steel, but now frail and bony like a child´s, into his arms wile racing to the boarding house, shoving him on his bed, furious and helpless at the same time.

"What is it that you keep saving me when I want to die, little brother", Damon asked wearily, getting up from the bed, after what felt like a very long time. "You can´t do this to Alaric", Stefan sight. "He cares. It would kill him to know that he had killed you, he is so very damaged already. You of all people ought to know, how little it takes for the broken to finally trip over." He turned away.

"You deem me so worthless that I don´t even deserve a last mercy from a friend", Damon said quietly, his sentence a statement, not a question. Stefan whipped around, in rage, expecting to meet icy contempt. But his brother´s gaze was calm and strangely open, almost – human. The pain it held felt different. Not those shards of betrayal and self-contempt, of smashed hopes and shattered love, broken dreams and hopelessness he was so used to with his brother. And with himself, though he would never ever allow himself to admit it. Damon radiated something darker, an almost otherworldly agony.

He staggered forward: "What happened to you in the fire?" His brother´s voice was barely a whisper now, unable to hold up any defense. "I was burned, I was broken to the very core, and then I was forgiven." Even a vampire´s ears could hardly pick up his words now. "But it was all a mistake. I don´t deserve forgiveness. It should have been you."

When Stefan drew his shaking brother into his arms, he felt awkward first. After all, they had not touched in any non-hostile way for almost 150 years. "Yes you do. You have come a very long, cruel road. Now allow yourself to take a rest at home." And it ain´t over yet, Stefan thought, feeling a sting of envy and flinching about it. Because the consequences of our deeds stay with us for forever, even if the actions themselves are forgiven. So what lay before them would not be easy at all, not with Elena between them and Kathrine and half of the town on their back. But they could make it, he thought, hugging Damon tight, because they finally were brothers again.


End file.
